Meditation Chapter No.33, Mysticism, reading, forums, Numerology, Sun Signs, Divination

Posts: 3381 · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 9:56 am

Become a watcher of your thoughts, but not a thinker -- remember, not a thinker but a watcher of thoughts.

This is why we call our sages seeers, not thinkers. Mahavira is not a thinker. Buddha is not a thinker; they are seers, watchers. A thinker is a sick person. People who don't know, think. People who know don't think, they watch. They are able to see it, it is visible to them.

And the way to see is by observing the thoughts within you. Standing, sitting, sleeping or awake, watch whatever current of thoughts is flowing through you and don't get identified with any thought as though you were it. Let your thoughts flow separately from you and you be separate from them.

There should be two currents within you. An ordinary man who only thinks has just one current. A meditator has two currents within him, thoughts and watching. A meditator has two parallel currents within him, thoughts and witnessing.

An ordinary man has one current within him, that of thought. And an enlightened person also has only one current within him, that of simply watching. Try to understand this: an ordinary man has one current of thought within him, the watcher is asleep; the meditator has two parallel currents within him, thought and watching. Within an enlightened person only one current remains, that is watching. Thinking has died.

But because you have to learn watching from a state of thinking, you will have to meditate on thought and watching side by side. If we have to move from thought to watching, we will have to meditate on thought and watching simultaneously. This is what I call right-observation: this is what I call right-rememberance. Mahavira has called it 'wakeful intelligence'; mindfulness and wakeful intelligence. The one who is watching the thoughts is your wakeful intelligence. It is very easy to find thinkers, but it is difficult to find someone whose intelligence is awake.

Awaken your intelligence. I have told you how to awaken it -- by watching your thoughts with awareness. If you watch the actions of the body, the body will disappear; if you watch your racing thoughts, the thought process, then the thoughts will disappear; and if you observe your emotions closely, then the emotions will disappear.

I have said that for the purification of emotions, allow love to come in place of hatred and friendship in place of enmity. Now I tell you to also be aware of this truth: there is a dimension behind the one who is loving and the one who is hating, which is just awareness -- which neither loves nor hates. It is simply a witness. It sometimes watches hatred and sometimes watches love happening, but it is simply a witnessing, it is simply a watching.

When I hate someone, don't I at some point become aware of the fact that I am hating? And when I love someone, don't I somehow know inside that I am loving someone? That which is aware is behind the love and the hatred. It is your consciousness which is behind your body, thoughts and emotions -- behind everything. This is why the old scriptures call it neti-neti, neither this nor that. It is neither the body nor the thoughts nor the emotions. It is none of these. And where there is nothing, there is the watcher, the seer, the witnessing consciousness, the soul.

So remember to be a watcher of your emotions also. Eventually you will have to come to that which is only pure seeing. That which is pure seeing has to be saved. That pure seeing is intelligence. We have called that pure seeing wisdom. We call that pure seeing consciousness. that is the ultimate goal of yoga and all the religions.

The basic quality of inner spiritual discipline is right observation, right-observation of the actions of the body, of the thought process and of the inner currents of emotions. A person who becomes a witness after having passed through these three layers will reach the other shore. And to reach the other shore is to almost reach the goal. Someone who remains caught up in any of these three is still tied to this shore. He has not yet reached the goal.

I have heard a story:

It was a full-moon night...like tonight. The moon was full and it was a very beautiful night, so some friends felt like going boating in the middle of the night. They wanted to have some fun, so before climbing into the boat they had a lot to drink. Then they got into the boat, took the oars and started to row the boat. They rowed for a long time.

When the morning was breaking and a cold wind began to blow, they regained their senses and thought, " How far have we come? We have been rowing all night."

But when they looked closely they saw that they were still alongside the same bank where they had been the night before. Then they realiszed what they had forgotten to do: they had rowed the boat for such a long time, but they had forgotten to untie it.

And however much someone who has not untied his boat from the bank may sufer and cry, in this infinite ocean of the divine, he will not get anywhere.

To what is your boat of consciousness tied? -- it is tied to your body, to your thoughts and to your emotions. The body, the thoughts and the emotions -- that is your shore. In a drunken state you can go on rowing for lifetimes, for endless lifetimes. And after endless lifetimes when the cool breeze of awakened thinking, of some wisdom touches you, when some ray of light touches you and you wake up and look, you will find that you have wasted lifetimes rowing your boat and that you have been tethered to the same shore where you started. And then you will see the simple fact that you have forgotten to untie the boat.

Learn how to untie the boat. To row is very easy, but to untie the boat is very difficult. Ordinarily it is very easy to untie the boat and to row it is more difficult. But where the stream of life is concerned, it is very difficult to untie the boat but to row is very easy. Ramakrishna once said, "Untie your boat, open your sails and the winds of the divine will take you -- you will not even need to row."

What he said was true -- if you untie the boat you will see that the winds of the divine are already blowing and they will take you to faraway shores. And unless you reach the further shores you will not know what bliss is. But first you have to untie your boat.

Meditation means that you untie the boat. Why were those people unable to untie their boat? They were drunk, they were unconscious. And in the morning when they felt the cold winds and came back to their senses, they found that the boat was still tied to the riverbank.

I have spoken of right-watchfulness. Right-watching is the opposite of unconsciousness. You are in an unconscious state, and this is why you have tied the boat to your body, to your thoughts and to your emotions. If by feeling the cold winds of right-observation you become alert, then it will not be difficult to untie the boat. Unconsciouness is holding on to the boat, consciousness will set the boat free. And right observation in all actions is the way to consciousness.

There is only one inner spiritual discipline and that is right-rememberance--right--remembrance or right-intelligence or right-consciousnes. Remember this, because it is very important to use it constantly, continuously.

If the three purifications and the three emptinesses can happen.....The three purifications will help to bring the three emptinesses. If the three emtptinesses are experienced it is samadhi, enlightenment. Samadhi is the door to truth, to the self, to the divine. For the one who awakens in samadhi, the world disappears. To disappear does not mean that these walls will disappear and that you will disappear. To disappear means that these walls will no longer be walls and you will no longer be you. When a leaf moves, you will not only see the leaf but also the lifeforce which moves it; and when the winds blow you will not only feel the winds but also the powers which make them blow; and then even in each and every particle of dirt you will see not only the mortal, but also the immortal. The world will disappear in the sense that the divine will have appeared.

God is not the creator of the world. Today somebody was asking me, "Who created the world?"

You are near the mountains, you are in the valleys and you are asking. "Who created these valleys and these trees? Who created them?" You will go on asking this until you experience for yourself. And once you have come to know you will no longer ask who created them, you will know -- it is existence itself. There is no creator. Existence itself is the creator. When you have eyes you will be able to see, you will see that the creation itself is the creator. And this vast world around you will become the divine. The divine is not experienced in opposition to the world; when the wordly attitude disappears, the divine appears.

In that state of samadhi you will know the truth -- that veiled truth, the truth which is normally hidden. And what is it hidden by? It is hidden only by your unawareness. There are no veils covering truth, the veils are over your own eyes. This is why one who drops the veils from his eyes comes to know truth.

And I have told you how to remove the veils from in front of your eyes -- the three purifications and the three emptineses will help you to remove these veils from your eyes. And when the eys are without any veils, it is called samadhi. That pure vision without any veils is samadhi.

Samadhi is the ultimate goal of religion -- of all religions, of all the yogas. I have talked about it. Reflect on it, contemplate on it and meditate on it. Think about it, give it some thought and let it sink into your being. Just like a gardener, someone who sows seeds will one day find tht flowers have blossomed. And someone who works hard digging in the mines will one day find diamonds and precious stones. And someone who dives into the water and goes deep will one day find he has brought up pearls.

One who has the longing and who is courageous will find his life transformed, he will make progresss. To climb a mountain it not as great a challlenge as to know oneself. And it is humiliation for an intelligent person who has the strength and energy to not know himself. Every single person can have the determination to know the truth, to know himself and to know enlightenment. With this resolve and by using these foundations it is possible for anyone to succeed. Think about this.

Now we will sit for the night meditation. Again, I will tell you something about the night meditation. Yesterday I told you about the five chakras in the body: there are parts of your body connected to these chakras. If you relax those chakras, if you go on sugesting to them they they are relaxing, then those particular parts of your body will simultaneously become relaxed.

The first chakra is the muladhar chakra. The first chakra can be felt near the genitals. You will instruct this chakra to become relaxed. Focus your attention on it totally, tell it to become relaxed.

You will think, "But what is going to happen just by saying it? How ill my legs become relaxed just because I tell them to relax? If I tell the body to freeze, how will it freeze?"

It does not take much intelligence to understand such a small thing. When you say to yourself, "Hand, pick up the handkerchief?" -- how does the hand pick up the handkerchief? And when you tell your feel to walk, how do they walk? And when you tell your feet not to walk, how do they stop? Each and every atom of your body follows your orders. If it did not follow your orders, the body could not function. You tell the eyes to close and they close. There is a thought within, and the eyes close. There is a thought within, and the eyes close. Why? Do you think there is no connection between the thought and the eyes? If there were not you could sit inside thinking that your eyes should close, and they might not close. And you could be thinking that your feet should walk, and they might not move.

Whatever the mind says, it simultaneously reaches the body. If you are just a little intelligent you can make your body do anything. What you are making it do every day is just natural. But do you know that even that is not absolutely natural; even there, the power of suggestion is working. Do you know that if a human child is brought up among animals, he will not be able to stand upright? Incidents like this have happened.

Some time ago, in the forests near Lucknow, there was such an incident. A boywas found who had been brought up by wolves. Wolves like to carry children off from the village, and sometimes the wolves have also reared them. Many such incidents have taken place. So about four years ago a fourteen year old boy who had been reared by the wolves was taken from the forest. The wolves had carried him off from the village as a small child, and they had fed him milk and reared him.

That fourteen year old boy was absolutely a wolf: he walked on all fours, he could not stand upright. He made wolf-like sounds, and he was ferocioius, dangerous. If he had got hold of a human being he would have eaten him alive, but he was not able to speak. Now why would a boy of fourteen not be able to speak? And if you told him to speak, to try to speak, what would he do? And why would a fourteen-year-old boy not stand upright? --because it was never suggested to him to stand upright, so it never occurred to him to do it.

When a small child is born in your house, when he sees all of your walking it gives him the idea. Seeing people walking all around him, his courage grows and slowly, slowly he gets the idea that it is possible to stand up on two feet and to walk. He gets the idea, and it penetrates deeper into his consciousness. Then he gets the courage to walk and makes the effort. When he sees others speaking, he gets the idea that it is possible to speak; then he makes the effort to speak. The vocal chords which enable him to speak become activated.

There are many glands within us which are not active. Remember, the total development of man has not yet happened. Those who know the science of the body say that only a very small part of man's brain is active. The remaining part is totally inactive, it does not appear to have any functions. And scientists have not been able to discover their function. As yet, those parts appear to have no function. A large part of your brain is lying there totally unused. But yoga says that all these parts can become active. And descending from the human beings, in animals an even smaller part is used -- the greater part of an animal's brain is unused. When you descend the ladder even further, an even greater part of the brain of the lower animals is unused.

If we had been able to examine the brains of Buddha and Mahavira, we would have found that their entire brain was used; no part was dormant. Their whole brain capacity was used, and in you only a small part is used.

Now in order for that part which is not used to become active, you will have to give yourself suggestions; you will have to make an effort. Yoga has tried to make those parts of the brain active by working on the chakras. Yoga is a science, and a time will come when yoga will become the greatest science in the world.